Dallas police: 911 caller’s accent, rapid speech impeded response

A 911 call taker did not realize a West Dallas store manager had just been in a shootout with robbers Sunday night because he had a heavy accent and spoke fast during his frantic call for help, police officials said in a written statement on Tuesday.

The call was therefore coded as a robbery, and because officers were busy with more urgent calls, they did not respond to the store in the 4800 block of Bernal Drive near Singleton Boulevard for more than an hour, police said.

The handling of the call and the department’s response is leading to renewed scrutiny on the long-troubled 911 call center that city and police officials earlier this year declared vastly improved.

Joe Cho can be heard breathlessly saying the word “shot” repeatedly on the call, a recording of which was also released Tuesday. He begs for officers to come quickly.

The Dallas police statement said, “The caller had a very heavy accent and was speaking very quickly. The call taker had a very difficult time understanding the information and did not hear the caller say ‘shot’ or ‘shoot.’ Therefore, the call was listed as a robbery and forwarded to the police dispatcher at 11:02 p.m.”

Robberies that are reported after they occur are typically categorized as “Priority 2” calls. The stated Dallas police goal for responding to such calls is 12 minutes or less.

Supervisors also have the option, based on the details of the call, of increasing it to a “Priority 1,” which carries a response goal of eight minutes or less.

At the time of Cho’s call, officers were working calls for an active shooter, a major accident, a burglary in progress and another shooting, police said.

Police said that about 11:14 p.m., officers responded to another shooting call on Bernal Drive, less than two miles from the store, and found a man who had been shot in his abdomen and left leg. The man, Jamarcus Dalevon Johnson, 21, would not say how he was shot, police documents said.

Those officers also found various articles of clothing that Johnson appeared to be trying to hide, and bloody clothing dumped nearby.

At 12:14 a.m., officers responded to the 11 p.m. robbery call at Pepe’s Grocery & Deli, according to police records. By that time, Cho had locked up the store and gone home. Some time after that — Cho said it was after 1 a.m. — the officers called him at home and asked him to come back to the store.

Cho moved to the area 30 years ago and has worked at the store for 17 years. He said in an interview on Monday that he was upset by how the call was handled and angry when police called and asked him to come back to the scene. He could not be reached for comment Tuesday.

Johnson faces an aggravated robbery charge in the case. Police said a second suspect has been taken into custody and the investigation is ongoing.

Police officials would not answer questions on the case Monday and most of the day Tuesday. They issued the statement and released the recording shortly after 5 p.m.

Dallas Police Chief David Brown is off work this week to care for a family member.

His boss, First Assistant City Manager A.C. Gonzalez, said in a written statement, “The department has responded with initial findings. More review will be undertaken to determine what operational changes/disciplinary actions are warranted.”

In March, Gonzalez was among those who told members of the Dallas City Council Public-Safety Committee that the beleaguered 911 call center was drastically improved following two public controversies.

On July 4, numerous 911 callers trying to report an East Oak Cliff house fire said they heard recorded messages telling them to stay on the line for the next available operator. No one was injured in the blaze. It led to calls from city leaders for improved technology at 911.

On Aug. 17, a woman called 911 to report she was being attacked. Her family found her dead at her home two days later.

Police say Deanna Cook called 911 as her abusive ex-husband attacked her in her home. She was heard on the call choking and pleading for her life, but a 911 call taker did not pass critical details about the call on to dispatchers. Officers who got to the scene 50 minutes after the call left after no one answered the door.

Cook’s ex-husband, Delvecchio Patrick, was later charged with her murder.

A Dallas Morning News investigation in September showed that the 911 call center had been chronically understaffed for years. Exhausted 911 call takers were scrambling to help callers who were greeted at peak times with recorded messages telling them to wait for the next operator.

Among the major improvements cited in the March briefing was the hiring of 45 new call takers.

Julie Righter, a member of the board of directors for the Association of Public Safety Communications Officials, said it is not uncommon for a 911 call taker not to pick up on something a frantic caller is trying to tell them.

“It goes very fast and when there’s a language barrier or hysterics, it’s real easy not to hear something,” said Righter, communications coordinator for the emergency communications center in Lincoln, Neb. “In my experience, it sounds much clearer on a tape or on a digital recording than what goes into the dispatcher’s ear.”

But Righter said one thing she would question would be why someone didn’t realize sooner that the two calls on Bernal Drive, given their close proximity, may be related.

“Some of the responsibility to correlate those two would have been in the field, not the dispatch center,” Righter said.

Deputy Chief Scott Walton, who now oversees the 911 call center, led the March briefing in which he noted numerous improvements in the months following Cook’s death. Reached on Tuesday, he said the “911 operator, from what I heard, stayed very calm and tried to get the information necessary out to get the police there.”

“People that call 911 are frantic,” Walton said, “so you don’t change your priorities based on how frantic someone sounds when they call.”

Follow Scott Goldstein on Twitter at @dallascrime and Tanya Eiserer at @tanyaeiserer.

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